Making Peace With What Is

Have you ever tried to change your boss? Your partner? The guy on the road who cut you off? How’d that work out for you? Did that person hear, understand, and magically start doing things your way and suddenly all was right with the world again? Or did you become frustrated, irritable, and angry at their lack of attention to your plan for how people, more specifically they themselves, should behave? Think about it for a minute — I’d wager that your episodes of non-acceptance trigger more bad behaviors than the fallout from just about anything else you do.

Here’s an even harder question: have you ever tried to change something about yourself that was out of your control? I have. It was a fruitless and vain attempt, which I’ll tell you now had a happy ending not because I changed what I couldn’t change, but because I made peace with it.

At 26, I was married to my first and only wife, Lyda. I was pursuing a doctorate in organizational behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles. Since high school I had been a folliclly challenged man, but back then I was loath to admit it. Each morning I would spend several minutes in front of the bathroom mirror carefully arranging the wispy blond stands of hair still remaining on the top of my head. I’d smooth the hairs forward from back to front, then curve them to a point in the middle of my forehead, forming a pattern that looked vaguely like a laurel wreath. Then I’d walk out into the world with my ridiculous comb-over, convinced I looked normal like everyone else.